There is a recognized need for companionship for many lonely, isolated, and/or confined people. Individuals who lack social interaction, support, and regular contact from friends, family, or colleagues frequently become depressed; their health suffers; their life span may be reduced; and they sometimes even become suicidal. Groups of people with an increased tendency for suffering from these effects include the elderly, disabled, prisoners, institutionalized or hospitalized individuals, researchers in extreme conditions, and astronauts.
One particular environment, space, is often characterized as an “ICE”, or Isolated, Confined, and Extreme condition. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has recognized the negative impact of the ICE condition for astronauts who may be relatively isolated for lengthy periods, whether aboard the international space station (ISS), on future moon or planetary bases, and during extended travel to Mars and beyond. The isolation is compounded by the delay in communication, fundamentally limited by the speed of light, between earth and astronauts.
As distances increase, so do the delays in communication. The relatively short delay of 1.25 seconds from the Earth to the moon, dictates that response times in dialogue exchanges increase and “real-time” communication generally turns out to be difficult or infeasible. One-way transfer of information to Mars can take as much as twenty minutes, eliminating the possibility for a real-time dialogue with people on Earth. As the durations of space expeditions increase, additional ‘care package’ provisions from home become less frequent or are not practical. With a limited crew size of four to six (4-6), today, and constrained due to limited on-board resources for the foreseeable future, variety in social interactions is limited.
NASA has determined that mitigating astronauts' separation of social support from family and close friends during long-duration space expeditions is important to prevent declines in crew behavioral health and performance. The impact on astronauts is partly due to these response time delays and partly due to the absence of their critical social support network. The need for countermeasures to mitigate the loss of astronauts' Earthbound social support is documented but unresolved.
Attempts have been made for several decades to provide various forms of artificial human companions. These efforts include both hardware and software entities designed to provide companionship. Earlier versions include the virtual “Tamagotchi” characters who required human attention to survive, the hamster-like “Furbie”, and a variety of toys, robots, and artificial pets. Notable artificial pets and associated companies include Sony's Aibo robotic dog, Omron's NeCoRo robotic cat, GeriJoy's companion avatar, and Pandorabot's intelligent, conversational agents. Fundamentally, these artificial companions are designed to improve the quality of life for their users, by increasing social interaction.
Artificial human companions, however, have not yet solved the problem of social isolation, and will not replace the familiar, supportive social interaction with family members, loved ones, friends, other colleagues. While advances in AI are increasing the quality and believability of artificial dogs, cats, avatars, and other virtual or physical robots and pets; people are not yet willing to fully suspend disbelief to view an artificial entity as a replacement companion.
While there are improved interactions and conversations enabled with audio, visual, and biological sensors combined with AI to analyze the emotions of users through facial expressions, body language, voice, and various biological measurements (heart rate, galvanometric skin signals, electroencephalograms (EEGs), electrocardiograms (ECGs), etc.), when users are asked implicitly, or explicitly, to suspend disbelief that the artificial companion is “real”, their reluctance to do so limits the benefits of social engagement that a person would experience with a real, familiar, close companion. As yet, autonomous, artificial companions are more effective for users with compromised cognition, such as dementia, and less believable and impactful for persons with full cognitive function.
In cases where humans power or augment a companion, whether visibly (through an avatar version of the human), or invisibly (by directing the behavior of, for example, an avatar or robot, in other ways), human support is required, which is not easily or cost effectively scalable. Humans must be hired, trained, managed, and monitored to assure that they are providing quality service through an avatar or other artificial companion. Furthermore, this solution is exacerbated when communications are delayed and/or unreliable.
Further, each of these artificial entities provides only one-on-one companionship with its user. Lacking in these scenarios are the social or group dynamics that are key characteristics of interactions with family, relatives, close friends, organizations (e.g., religious, support groups), professional colleagues, classmates, and so on.
More recently, NASA's Astrobee and Airbus' CIMON robotics have been designed to provide assistance and companionship to astronauts in ICE conditions aboard the International Space Station. As with other AI based companions, these devices still require the suspension of disbelief by astronauts to become meaningful companions, and also do little to connect space travelers with their earthbound or distant human social network of support.
New paradigms are required to provide a technology-driven social support system that one would experience when engaging with, for example, close friends, family, and colleagues. The basic functions of a social support system provide: 1) companionship in a tangible form that supports the feeling of ‘belonging to’, 2) emotional or esteem support that interprets and translates moods to create caring and empathy, and 3) information that is curated with suggested solutions or exchanges that result in positive outcomes through a conveyance of text, images, movement, sound, and other modalities. To be effective, support functions must be integrated from multiple sources and provide positive support in a variety of ways.